Peter Jonathan Winston (March 18, 1958 â disappeared January 26, 1978) was an American chess player. He was awarded the title of National Master in 1972, and shared first prize in the 1974 U.S. Junior Chess Championship. He was labelled a genius as a child, but developed mental-health problems in his late teens. He disappeared in mysterious circumstances in 1978, at the age of nineteen.
Peter Jonathan Winston was born on March 18, 1958. His father, Leonard, taught chemistry at Columbia, and the family lived in a subsidized three-bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive, Manhattan.
At the age of five, Winston was enrolled at Sands Point Elementary, a school for gifted children on Long Island. In 1964, at the age of six, he was profiled by The Saturday Evening Post in an article titled "The Remarkable Life of a Little Genius". According to the article, a clinical psychologist who tested him wrote: "Peter is a true genius. He is 5 yrs. and 5 mos. and his range of information, arithmetical reasoning, attention, concentration and abstract reasoning is equivalent to 15 yrs. and 10 mos." His mother, Florence, is quoted as saying: "Maybe he won't be able to make use of this vast potential; maybe something will get in the way."
Winston was taught to play chess by his grandfather. Winston's father discouraged him from playing the game, fearing that it would take over his life. He felt his son's true gift was for mathematics. In 1967, when Winston was nine years old, his father died unexpectedly from a heart attack.
After Sands Point Elementary, Winston's education became more sporadic. He enrolled at New Lincoln High School, but left after a year. He later said: "I was sick and tired of the daily grind at New Lincoln, of having boring classes...and all that shit." He and his mother then participated in the creation of an alternative high school named Elizabeth Cleaners Street School. He initially seemed happy there, but by the second year had more or less dropped out. One of the teachers at the school was David Nasaw. With Nasaw's help, Winston was eventually accepted by Franconia College, and started there in September 1975, at the age of seventeen.
Winston was awarded the title of National Master in June 1972, at the age of fourteen.
On 1 July 1972, in the first round of the Atlantic Open in New York City, he decisively defeated the grandmaster Walter Browne (who later won the U.S. Chess Championship six times). Winston annotated the game for the October 1972 issue of Chess Life & Review.
In 1974, he shared first prize with Larry Christiansen at the U.S. Junior Chess Championship in Philadelphia. As a result, the U.S. Chess Federation decided to send Christiansen to the U.S. Open in New York and Winston to the World Junior Chess Championship in Manila. Winston struggled in what was his first major event on the international stage and finished eighth.
When the FIDE international rating list was published in January 1975, Winston had a rating of 2285. This was his peaking rating. In January 1976, his rating fell to 2260, where it stayed until January 1979, when it fell to 2220.
In 1976, at the age of eighteen, Winston suffered a psychotic breakdown and was hospitalized. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic and given large doses of Thorazine. Later, his diagnosis was changed to one of manic-depression, and he was given lithium. For a period of time, he was held in a padded room at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Winston believed the medication he had been given had affected his ability to play chess. In November 1977, he participated in a chess tournament at Hunter College High School. He played nine games and lost all of them. The result was so statistically implausible that officials refused to rate the tournament. An administrator from FIDE suggested Winston had lost the games intentionally.
On January 25, 1978, Charles Hertan went to visit Winston at his apartment on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. Winston insisted that they go to the Meadowlands racetrack, so they took the bus there and spent some time betting on races. Hertan grew tired and went home alone; Winston telephoned his sister, Wynde, and asked her to pick him up, which she did. He spent the night at his sister's apartment, and in the morning she told him he had to see a doctor. He reacted by running away from the apartment screaming. He then went to a friend's home, where he ate lunch and spoke of going to Texas to visit Walter Korn, whom he described as "God". His friend's parents found his behavior disturbing and telephoned his mother. He left his friend's house after lunch and was never seen again.
Winston's disappearance coincided with the Great Blizzard of 1978 (January 24âÂÂ29), which was followed by a blizzard in the Northeastern United States (February 5âÂÂ7). It is unknown whether his disappearance was linked to the blizzards.
Around 2010, Winston's mother telephoned Frank Brady and asked him whether he would like Winston's chess books. Upon arriving at the apartment on Riverside Drive, Brady discovered that Winston's bedroom was exactly as it had been left more than thirty years before. Winston's clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe. Winston's mother said she never went in the room. Brady took the books back to the Marshall Chess Club, and shortly afterwards he heard that Winston's mother had died.